


A Family Of My Own

by TheTruthAboutLove



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, Family, Friendship, Life is hard but Jillian Holtzmann is strong, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 15:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7898134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTruthAboutLove/pseuds/TheTruthAboutLove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You might never have a family of your own. You might never have friends or someone who loves you and whom you love back.”<br/>Jillian looked at him and saw the fear in his eyes. She did not understand that fear. She did not understand the look in his eyes and why it meant so much to him that she had another family when her parents were all she needed.<br/>“I like the books you gave me, I like to invent and to discover and to learn and I want to keep doing that.”<br/>“Those books won't teach you the purpose of life, Jillian.”<br/>She thought that was debatable.<br/>The whole world, the whole <i>universe</i>, worked according to the laws of physics. So, if a book could teach her the purpose of life, it surely would be one of those.</p>
<p>Or, Jillian Holtzmann's journey and how she found a family of her own and the love of her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Family Of My Own

**Author's Note:**

> My first try at Holtzbert, hope you enjoy!

Jillian was six years old when she listened to her mother's radio screeching for the millionth time and thought to herself that she was going to fix it for her.

She took the radio apart and put it back together and the screeching was gone, but if her mother noticed she didn't say a single word about it.

After seeing the inside of that radio, there was no turning back. 

Jillian was in love with every bit of wire and metal she saw and she wanted to understand it better, to know everything about it, so she started reading her father's physics books from highschool and college and she learned a lot, but it wasn't enough. 

When their TV broke and her mother told her father for three days to call somebody but he didn't, Jillian decided to take matters into her own hands.

When she took it apart, it was different from the radio, although similar, and more complicated to fix, but eventually, while her mother made tea and chatted with her friends, she found the little broken piece and replaced it with a spare from her father's supply in the garage. She put the TV back together without saying anything.

When her mom's friends went away and she walked into the living room to find her watching the functioning television, she figured something was up.

“Wasn't that broken?”

“It was. I fixed it” she told her simply, like it was the most natural thing to ever happen to her.

Truth be told, it kind of was – she never felt quite as much at ease as she did when she was fixing something, taking it apart or putting it back together.

“Sure you did” her mother laughed it off.

Her father didn't.

He took home more books about mechanic and engineering and he casually left them in his own study, only to notice they were gone after a couple of days. He found them not too far from his desk, though, sitting under Jillian's bed.

“Please don't be mad.”

“I'm not, I bought them home for you to read, sweetheart. But don't keep them under your bed, they're going to get dusty” he warned her. “Or a ghost is going to steal them” he said the words lightly, as a joke, but they stuck.

They really, deeply, stuck with Jillian. She couldn't allow ghosts to steal the most valuable possessions she had, after all. Those books were too important to be lost like that, she couldn't let ghosts take them away.

  


//

  


Jillian was ten years old when she invented a little electronic object to open pop tabs with a remote, because she always scratched her fingers or broke her nails doing it.

She won a prize at a local science fair competing against highschool kids. They were very mean and she knew in that moment that, if she could have done it her way, she would have avoided highschool at all costs.

That night, when they got home, with a patent and a check for her invention – albeit small, it was her fist check and she was only ten so, to her, it was the largest sum of money in the world – her father took her by the shoulders and knelt before her.

“Jill, you know I love you. Your mother loves you dearly, too. And if you want to keep doing this, to keep” he searched for a word that seemed to escape him. “Inventing things” he settled at last. “We will support you.”

“I do, daddy” she told him, smiling. “I'm already working on something else, a tool to detect ionizing matter and- well it's hard to explain and it's all only a theory, but I'm trying to detect an invisible form of energy in the form of ionizing atoms so that they won't steal my books.”

He looked at her for a very long while.

“A ghost detector? You want to build a ghost-”

“Yes” she told him excitedly.

“Jill, ghosts aren't real” he told her simply. 

That wasn't his main concern in that moment, she was young and she could believe in ghosts for a couple years more if she wanted. He was worried about something else entirely. 

“Listen to me, sweetheart. If you keep doing this, inventing stuff, talking about things nobody else understands, this will make you different.”

“It will make you spacial” her mother interrupted and looked down at her husband with a warning glare.

He barely turned to look up at her and then looked back at his daughter.

“It will make you different and some people won't understand it. Almost nobody will, actually. It would be a very lonely life, Jill. You might never have a family of your own. You might never have friends or someone who loves you and whom you love back.”

Jillian looked at him and saw the fear in his eyes. She did not understand that fear. She did not understand the look in his eyes and why it meant so much to him that she had another family when her parents were all she needed.

“I like the books you gave me, I like to invent and to discover and to learn and I want to keep doing that.”

He sighed and got up, but he kept looking down at her with sadness in his eyes, while a deep frown was twisting his features.

“Those books won't teach you the purpose of life, Jillian.”

She thought that was debatable.

The whole world, the whole _universe_ , worked according to the laws of physics. So, if a book could teach her the purpose of life, it surely would be one of those.

  


//

  


Jillian was twelve when she started home schooling and she was sixteen when she was accepted into college.

As it turned out, she really did avoid highschool after all.

She was eighteen the first time she thought she had fallen in love.

Her name was Kate and she was three years older and wanted to become an English professor, she was shorter than her and a brunette. Jillian felt her hands get sweaty around her.

They went on three dates. 

Jillian remembered the third all too well, she took Kate to her favorite restaurant and she wouldn't stop talking. Not that it was a problem, because Jillian never talked much and when she did it was about her inventions and girls didn't want to ear about that, she learned it the hard way. She stuck to light flirting and winks and smirks. That worked fairly well, so she used that with women. Not that she usually went further than that. But on a few occasions she had felt confident and comfortable enough to go home with them.

It never lasted. But it was different with Kate.

The brunette talked and she liked to listen and learn about English literature and about Authors and she liked how passionate the other woman was about that.

She thought she loved Kate.

On their third date, when the brunette kissed her and brought her home, Jillian felt like it could be different that time, it could be better than before. They could keep going on dates and they could be together. Maybe they would even fall in love.

But Kate found a lame excuse to ask her to leave in the morning and never called her again, she never even replied to a text. Until a couple of weeks after, when they run into each other in the cafeteria and Jillian asked her what went wrong.

“Look” Kate had told her with a condescending tone that would stick with her, much like her father's remark about ghosts stealing her books. “You're hot and funny. But you're super weird. You're eighteen and you have a degree in engineering and going for the second one. You talk about weird stuff and inventions. You're very good looking and you're good in bed, you won't ever have a problem bringing girls home, but a relationship? I'm sorry but I thought you knew. You're not the kind of girl to bring home to meet the parents, that's all. At least, not for me.”

Jillian decided she never loved Kate, actually she had never even liked her, she just never knew her well enough to be able to do that.

That night, she worked on her ghost detector eating Pringles and listening to music written in the decade she was born.

Life was hard, but Jillian Holtzmann was strong.

And she would find the purpose of life, somewhere, somehow.

  


//

  


Jillian's mentor, doctor Rebecca Gorin, taught her everything there was to know about engineering and everything she knew about physics. But even that didn't take that long to be learned. She was a fast learner. 

By the time she was twenty-three doctor Gorin thought she was ready to go her own way, she was positive there was nothing else she could teach her.

“You're the one who's been teaching me for the last six months, and as much as I appreciate our latest research, I think you should accept a more prestigious position, even if it means you have to leave our lab, Jillian.”

She tried to stay, but after too many discussions on the matter, she figured there was no point in keep arguing when they both knew her mentor was right.

She left, but she didn't feel sad. She knew she was headed in the right direction and she and her professor would keep in touch, visit and help each other with their respective researches if it was required.

Rebecca Goring taught her more than physics and engineering, she taught her it was okay to be herself, inside and outside. 

That was why she dyed her hair and changed her style to reflect her personalty. That was how she built herself. She looked at the girl she was, looked at herself as one of her circuits or pipes or wires, something she could easily take apart and put back together. 

That was the moment she figured why she liked aluminum that much. It was soft and malleable, it was light but very resistant.

She was Aluminum.

So she carved herself, she molded the girl she was, the clean slate she was, into the woman she wanted to be. She might have been light, but she was resilient. And she was ready to be herself and be okay with that, with what people thought of her appearance or her weirdness, because they could never see who she really was. 

But she knew herself, she took herself apart and put herself back together the same way she did with everything else she touched. And she found that she liked herself the way she was and she wasn't going to be someone different just to please others.

Jillian Holtzmann was Aluminum. She was crazy, a genius and she was as weird as they come. And she wouldn't have had it any other way.

  


//

  


So when she was twenty-four she left doctor Gorin's lab, with the promise of a brilliant career and a bright future ahead of her.

But five years, three jobs and one incident at NASA later, she felt like there wasn't anywhere where she could truly be herself and work on what she wanted without being eventually fired.

Until, and that was the greatest thing to ever happen to her, she found a laboratory that researched on ghosts. She didn't care about low money and long hours or the fact that with two degrees and three PhDs in the best universities of the country she had to work for an unknown college in New York City.

She didn't care that her parents sounded so disappointed. Really, she didn't.

Well, maybe she did a little bit.

  


But she did it anyway, because Jillian just wanted to be herself and do what she loved. Inventing things she could be proud of.

She was twenty-nine when she walked into Abby Yates' lab and shook her hand and introduced herself to a woman that looked lost and lonely just like her, but with a larger understanding of human nature, even if she didn't quite have Jillian's knowledge on as many scientific fields. She introduced herself as Jillian Holtzmann, but Abby only called her Holtzmann and after a while she only called her Holtz. It was nice. It was their thing.

Abby was her first, true friend.

She felt like she belonged there.

  


It was a rainy day of two years later when she sat down in front of Abby with her most serious face, watching her with her chin popped on her hand while she ate her wantons.

Abby paused at the intensity of the gaze and swallowed hard.

“Abby. Brave, fierce, Abby. I have a question for you. Something that I've been asking myself since I was ten years old.”

Abby swallowed again and put down her soup.

“Ask away.”

“What do you think is the purpose of life?”

Abby got used long ago to her weirdness. It never bothered her. If anything, it brought them closed and made Abby like her more. They just clicked.

“Well, shit Holtz. That's some deep stuff, I don't know. I suppose whatever makes you happy, that's what you've gotta do, that's your purpose and it's different for all of us.”

So her father might have been right, after all. Maybe she could not find the answer in a book. But she would keep looking anyway.

  


//

  


Jillian was a different person by the age of thirty-two. Since meeting Abby, she realized there was nothing wrong with her, she was just fine being herself and the only reason people didn't like her was because they didn't really bothered to know her.

She shrugged it off ever since.

She was happy with herself and that was all that mattered.

So she danced with passion, she lip-synced to her favorite songs, she smiled and winked and always cracked a joke.

She acknowledged that she was happy, so since she was a scientist, she looked for the moment in time that changed and pin pointed the factor, the variable that started it.

It was doing the job she loved. And it was having a friend who loved her for the person she truly was, her crazy and weird self.

It was the Ghostbusters, Abby, Erin and Patty.

They made her happy, they were her family.

And if Abby was right and being happy really was the purpose of life, than having a family, to love and to be loved, that was Jillian's purpose on Earth.

That was what her father had meant. Books could not show her what love meant and he thought they would prevent her from even ever founding friends, but in the end it was the very thing that brought her to her own family.

“Physics is the study of movement of bodies in space and it can unlock the mysteries of the universe, but it cannot answer the essential question of what is our purpose here” she saw Abby's expression when she recognized her words. “And to me the purpose of life is to love and to love is what you have shown me. I didn't think I would ever really have a friend until I met Abby and now I feel like I have a family of my own. And I love you.”

She never truly realized how much she was scared that her father might have been right until that very moment.

Maybe it was different from what he meant, but it was perfect to her.

She belonged right there.

  


//

  


A couple of months went by and she thought her speech was long forgotten.

She was working on the second floor, as usual, while Erin was at the desk in the other half of the room, working on an equation.

They eventually agreed Holtzmann could spare some room and they could split the floors and have half each plus the common area. To be honest, Patty and Abby had just two desks, their work space was considerably smaller and tidier, but the rest of the floor was taken up by the kitchen of the fire station.

Erin only needed a very big blackboard and a desk, so Holtzmann had the rest of the floor for all her stuff. Which was admittedly starting to get crowded. But it worked.

Erin was the one who proposed it, to Holtzmann's surprise, since the lower floor was also where Kevin's desk was, but she claimed she might have to ask for her help every now and then and Holtz could put in practice the things she theorized, so it made sense.

It didn't, really, because they could go up and down with the stairs if they needed to, so why pass up the opportunity to stare at Kevin?

Maybe to avoid a law suit.

“I thought about that speech a lot, lately” Erin told her out of the blue.

Holtzmann looked up and turned off her blowtorch for a second, confused.

“Which one, yesterday's speech Patty gave us about feminism and cultural differences shaped by stereotyped social roles or the other day's argument about which pizza topping is the best – that I totally won by the way, no matter what Abby says?”

Erin smiled, shaking her head a little.

“It's the pizza, right? I felt like it had more of an impact in our dynamics as a group, since everybody agreed on the other one.”

“No, Holtz. I was talking about your speech after we saved New York.”

“Ah, yes. The day I had a feeling out loud. Didn't particularly liked it, but didn't hate it either. I'd give it a six out of ten. Will probably try it again.”

Erin laughed and rolled her eyes playfully.

“Why did you think you would never have friends? Or a family?”

Holtzmann put down her blowtorch and took her gloves and goggles off, because that was an eye to eye type of conversation.

She sat down and rolled her chair to Erin's desk, putting an elbow and both feet up and on it.

Erin promptly took a book and some papers out of under her shoes.

“When I was ten years old I won a local competition with a silly invention. My dad warned me that if I kept going down that path I could live a very lonely life. I told him I wanted to keep inventing things and learn from his books, but he said something that I'll never forget.”

Erin's eyes were curious even though she tried to hide it.

“He said I wouldn't find the purpose of life in those books. He was right. My first friend, the one and only doctor Abby Yates, told me the purpose of life is happiness. And to me, love is happiness, so thinking back about my father saying I may never get a family was really upsetting.”

“That was unfair to say to a ten year old girl” Erin pointed out.

“It was. He didn't mean it in a bad way, he was trying to protect me from going down a very lonely path.”

“I can understand that” the other woman said, lowering her gaze. “It _is_ a lonely life.”

Holtzmann took her feet off the desk and got closer, leaning on it and towards Erin.

“I'll tell you a secret” she said in a low voice that drawn Erin closer. “Even when I was alone and heartbroken, I was never lonely. I always had something to take apart or put back together or build from scratch.”

Erin's hand very timidly fell upon her own.

“And now neither of us is lonely or alone anymore” Erin pointed out. “But I'm sorry to ear you had to be alone and heartbroken in order to get here.”

“I'm sorry you had to be lonely. I hope you never are ever again.”

Erin gave her a one sided smile.

“Never. This place is so crowded, it's like living in a frat house.”

They looked into each others eyes for a while, neither saying anything else.

“What was it?” Erin asked after a while. “The invention you won the competition when you were ten” she added to clarify.

Holzmann smirked.

“Ten year old me hurt her nails popping tabs so I made an automatized and remotely controlled electronic can opener. Burned three of my fingers and scratched my palms a lot while building it, but God forbid the lid broke my nails. I was a weird kid.”

Erin laughed and got up, shaking her head and picking up her mark to get back to the equation on her board.

“I didn't know you then, but I can bet you twenty dollars you're a weirder adult.”

Holtz's eyes got comically bigger.

“Doctor Gilbert, was that a joke?” she feigned shock. “I politely decline the bet, my mom didn't raise a fool and that, my friend, is one hundred percent a fool's bet.”

Erin kept smirking while she watched Holtz get back to her blowtorches.

“I'm glad he was wrong, Holtz” she whispered almost too quietly for her to hear. “I'm glad we got to be your family, it's a privilege.”

Holtz was dumbfounded by the admission.

She didn't know what to say, so she got back to her work.

“I feel privileged, too, to have you as a family” she replied after a while.

  


//

  


Holtz had never allowed anyone else to shape her.

She was Aluminum, but she could only be molded by herself. Since she was the version of herself she liked most, she didn't allow anyone to revert her back to a socially more acceptable version. She was fine and did not need fixing.

A couple of women tried and she dodge the hands that tried to pull off her goggles or set her hair free or hand her more standardized clothes.

She liked being loved, but she liked to love more. She felt like if she couldn't have both at the same time, she preferred to love. So she always chose to be the person she herself loved, rather than someone a woman might chose to love. 

The thing about Erin, was that she was the one to bring Holtzmann her yellow goggles when she left them behind, to compliment her on her choice of clothing articles, to help her redo her hair if they fell out on a particularly wild job.

Erin never tried to change her. She accepted her exactly how she was.

It made it easy, to fall in love with her.

So much so that she barely noticed it. It happened very slowly and then all at once and there was no way she could have avoided it, because Erin Gilbert was everything she could have ever dreamed for in another human being.

They were dancing around, doing their silly moves, laughing together, when it hit her.

She was in love with Erin.

She loved her in a way she never loved anyone before, in a way she was not entirely sure she could have ever loved someone else again.

Erin Gilbert might have been the love of her life.

And Holtzmann was – surprisingly enough even to herself – okay with that.

She couldn't picture anyone better or more fitting, if she was honest. And she knew the chances someone she loved that much might have loved her back had always been slim, so she was fine with being in love with a woman who would never love her back, but who liked her for who she really was.

It was as good as things could be.

Jillian Holtzmann was in love.

  


//

  


“Holtz, I found you cell phone downstairs in the fridge. It kept beeping.”

“I know Abby, I put it there.”

“Why would you-” her question was interrupted by another sound from the incriminated device that Abby was holding in her hand.

Holtz grabbed it and threw it on her desk, forcefully putting on top of it one of the spare Faraday cages that weren't on their backpacks so that it would stop receiving signals altogether.

“What's going on?” Erin asked from her side of the room, a little puzzled at her friend's stranger than usual behavior.

“Apparently now that I'm a Ghostbuster and we've saved New York and we're getting paid to be awesome, suddenly I'm the kind of girl to bring home to meet the parents.”

“What does that even mean?” Abby asked, confused as well.

“My kind-of-ex is stalking me. She started subtly with every social media I'm registered on, the Ghostbusters Instagram account, the Facebook page we have, our Twitter account, everything we ever posted she liked or reblogged or both. Well, everything Patty posted, since she's the one who manages them, so Patty pointed it out to me when her private messages for me have been starting three days ago. After seventy-two hours of silence from me, she moved to texts. I'm three beeping sounds away from blowtorching my own phone.”

“Have you thought about turning it off?” Abby asked her, raising an eyebrow at her.

Holtz just clicked her tongue and stared at her for a minute.

“This is like the time you left the keys in the car and a ghost stole it” Abby rolled her eyes. “You're a genius Holtz, but I swear to God, sometimes, if you don't have parental supervision, you do the dumbest things.”

“That's why we have you, the mom-friend” she smiled at Abby and hugged her, before lifting the Faraday cage and turning off her phone.

“I'm sorry, can we” Erin cleared her voice. “Can we go back a second. You're ex _girlfriend_ is stalking you?”

“Well, I mean, she wasn't really my girlfriend.”

The real meaning behind Erin's question was completely lost on her, she thought everyone had figured out she was gay a long time before.

She got back to her work without a second thought.

  


//

  


Holtz was thirty-three, the Ghostbusters had been together a whole year, she had been in love with Erin for at least six months and she was hitching to proclaim her love. She needed to talk to Abby so she could snap some sense into her and made her reevaluate the situation rationally.

She went to her desk one morning, while Erin was upstairs and Patty and Kevin hadn't come in yet, she put her elbows on her desk and looked her straight in the eyes.

“I'm in love with someone.”

Abby lowered the device she was working on and returned the stare.

“A coworker. Someone I should not be in love with.”

They kept looking at each other.

“Someone who could never love me back. A straight woman.”

Abby clicked her tongue and cleared her throat.

“Erin. I'm in love with Erin.”

Abby's expression didn't falter. “I figured. I've known for a while, you're not as subtle as you think you are, you're always flirting and winking. She thinks you do that with everybody, it's really cute and silly. It's like watching two eight-year-old kids crushing on each other.”

“Except she doesn't have a crush on me” Holtz countered. Then she thought about it for a very long minute, while Abby kept watching her. “Does she?”

“You know, there is one person who has the answer to that question, you should be asking her instead of me.”

“Patty?” Holtz teased her, making a face.

Abby rolled her eyes.

“Talk to her.”

“There's no point.”

“Why are you telling me all this, again?”

“Because I've been tempted to tell her and I wanted you to dissuade me.”

“Well, tough break, I'm persuading you further.”

Holzmann's nose scrunched up.

“You're going to regret it if you don't give it a shot, Holtzy.”

“What if it doesn't work out the way I want it to?” she asked in a whisper.

“Oh, but Holtz, what if it _does_?”

In the smile Holtz felt spreading on her face at the mere thought of Erin returning her feelings, she knew she had to give it a try.

“Thank you.”

“Anytime, Holtz.”

She liked her family very much.

  


//

  


Patty was on a date, Kevin was home, Abby was visiting her parents. It was the perfect evening to put her plan into motion.

It was a simple plan. Really simple. It only had one point. Two words. Seven letters.

_Tell her._

So the good news she was just one point away from completing her entire plan.

They were sitting on the couch, watching a movie and paying no attention to it.

“This wasn't where I was picturing being at this point in my life.”

“Me neither, our life is awesome” Holtzmann said excitedly with four pringles in her mouth.

“I mean, yeah, we proved the existence of ghosts, started a business around it and saved New York from an Apocalypse, it's been pretty good. But I meant on a personal level. Look at this film, she's thirty and she's sad because she's still single. I'm forty-two and the only long lasting relationship I had was with a man who was too coward to broke up with me while we where in college so he just waited until graduation and then fled.”

“I'm going to stop you right there. I'd like to hear this story in detail but I feel like it might make you uncomfortable, so I won't ask – for now. I just want to point out that it doesn't matter the age you are when you find love, it only matters that it's worth it. That, when you do find it, it shatters your world.”

Erin looked at her for a moment, then looked down.

“Have you ever been in love?”

Holtz paused for a long while. “Just once. But, you know, once is all it takes sometimes.”

“What was she like?”

Erin's voice was sad and disappointed, she was never very good at hiding her emotions.

Holtz took a deep breath.

There they were. It was time. She was ready.

_No she wasn't._

“She is the most brilliant person I've ever met. She is beautiful, and I mean it, like out of this world gorgeous, she's funny and an amazing dancer when she indulges. She's a little uptight, but she's such a caring person that it still amazes me to this very day.”

Erin watched her closely.

“She sounds like an awesome person” a sad smile appeared on her face.

“She is” Holtz told her, sliding closer to her on the couch and lowering her voice to a whisper. “And on top of all that” she said with a deadly serious tone. “She owns the world's tiniest bow tie. I didn't stand a chance from the moment we met, it was only a matter of time before I fell for her, nobody can really blame me.”

Erin frowned at her.

For several seconds she was confused. Holtz just watched her while she figured it out, waiting patiently.

“I hope this doesn't make things awkward. I just couldn't _not_ tell you. I promise I'll never do something stupid or embarrassing” she traced a cross on her chest, where her heart supposedly lied beneath, with her index. “And I won't bother you about this. I'm sorry. And I wish I could say I'll eventually get over you, but I don't think I could even if I tried and, honestly, I'm not really trying at all, because these feelings I have for you, they feel right and I feel like this was all meant to happen to me. If love is the purpose of life, loving you was the purpose of mine. Nobody could ever understand me like you do, without wanting to change any of it. I just think you and I work together on a level that cannot be replicated. I don't want to ever lose that.”

It all came out too fast and in that nervous tone she had whenever she spoke about how she felt or some other deep stuff like that.

“Now that you know we can pretend you don't and never talk about it, ever again” she added quickly.

“If you told me just so I could act as if I didn't know it, then why did you tell me at all?” Erin asked, not able to say anything else in that moment.

Holtz just kept looking at her.

She didn't know why.

She just had to.

Holtzmann felt herself starting to get lost in Erin's blue eyes and she let herself drift.

Then Erin's hand was on her cheek. And she was closer than before, so much closer.

“When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body.”

Holtzmann was more than a little taken aback from Erin's words, but she quickly recovered.

“Newton's third law of motion” she pointed out.

“Yes. It can be applied to us.”

“But that would mean, since I'm attracted to you with a certain amount of force, then you're attracted to me just as much.”

“I'm aware of what Newton's law means, Holtz.”

“You're saying you like me, too” she pointed out like Erin had gone crazy and she couldn't believe her own ears.

“I'm saying I love you, too.”

They truly understood each other. So much so that, when Erin leaned in and Holtz met her halfway, their first kiss was flawless.

  


//

  


Jillian Holtzmann was thirty-three when her parents called her and her father told her he was very proud of her and her mother told her she knew she could do this. She always had.

They hadn't really spoken heart to heart since her decision to pursue her dreams and leave her well paid job to go work with Abby on ghosts.

But they never really stopped talking to her, they just drifted apart, so it was weird for her to hear them apologize.

“It's fine. Look dad, I'm welding something and it's kind of urgent since it's a – well, a containment unit, our first one big and transparent unit so that we could talk to trapped ghosts without letting them out. Long story short, you know how my process is a lot of a try-fail-try again-succeed kind of thing? The first one might have not functioned properly so there might be a ghost on the loose in our lab.”

“That sounds weird.”

“And awesome!” she told him, trapping the phone between her ear and shoulder while she resumed her work. “Maybe you can visit one day. When you're comfortable with my job.”

“We'd love that, Jill.”

Patty's voice made her raise her eyes again.

“Holtzy I don't hear you welding fast enough, we're protonizing a ghost right now and if you don't give us anything to put it in, like, five minutes ago, we might have to put this thing in the toaster and get us all a French Toast Ghost!”

Patty's yelling was followed by Abby's laughter.

“That's funny, you got it Erin? Because he was a French painter.”

“Yes I got that Abby, I'm a little preoccupied so I'll laugh later, after Holtzmann has fixed the cage prototype.”

“I gotta go dad, I'll call you later.”

“Do that, honey. We'd like to know you're okay and this all ends fine.”

“A'ight, bye.”

She hung up and finished welding the piece that fell off earlier, connecting the cage's engine back to the power source she fixed.

The ghost suddenly was trapped in a cubicle of proton stream.

“There you go. And Erin, please, I hate the term cage, it's a containment unit” Holtz said with a smirk, leaning on the desk nearby.

Erin rolled her eyes. “Alright then. You guys do the talking, since I've been slimed again I'm going to go take off this suit, alright?”

“I'll help with your hair” Holtz offered. “It always sticks there for some reason” she muttered, following Erin upstairs.

After a couple of minutes of silence and a dozen of sneaky glances, while she took off her suit and Holtzmann started to wipe her hair, Erin decided to say what was on her mind.

“You talked to your parents” she pointed out.

“I do that pretty often.”

“Not about our job. Or ghosts in general.”

“They asked. They said they were sorry for not supporting this choice of career earlier. They didn't believe in ghosts, I was never actually sure myself. But I am now and they are, too. So they wanted to reconnect or something.”

Erin kept looking at her while, after wiping almost all of the smile in her hair with a towel, she proceeded to urge Erin to the sink so she could help her washing it.

“Are you okay with it? Are you happy or annoyed?”

“Neither. Both. It's been a year, they could have told me sooner that they were sorry. But it's a lot just to admit there was something wrong and apologize for it, since parents usually feel entitled enough to not even bother.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”

Holtz froze.

“God, Erin, I'm sorry.”

“It's fine.”

“I shouldn't have said that, it was stupid.”

“Holtz” she stopped her softly. “My parents called almost as soon as we saved the city. They _did_ apologize about everything. I just felt like I couldn't forgive them after all this time, so we just don't talk about this.”

Holtzmann finished washing her hair and then offered Erin a clean towel to wrap them in.

“Do you think you'll ever be able to?”

She shrugged.

Holtz knelt beside her chair and looked up at her.

“Do you want me to stop talking about this?”

Erin smiled, wrapping her hair and then turning to face her.

“I'm the one who brought it up” she pointed out. She sneaked her arms around Holtz's shoulders, beckoning her closer.

“For what is worth, I think you'll forgive them, eventually. You probably won't even mean to, but forgiveness is just _that_ weird, sometimes.”

“Will you forgive yours?”

“Sure. I mean, they disapproved of my job and thought I was a bit crazy. It's no biggie, really” her hands found Erin's waist and settled there.

Gilbert leaned down and kissed her softly.

It startled Erin, sometimes, how someone that was so often let down by others and by life in general, always had the strength to keep forgiving the people she cared about. Holtz had such a big heart, Erin thought it could almost compete with the engineer's brain.

Almost.

“I love you, Jillian.”

“I love you, too.”

  


//

  


Holtz's parents really did go visit them a couple of months after.

Erin had been super nervous all day.

“Are you going to introduce me as your girlfriend or your friend or you co-worker?” she blurted out the day before they were going to visit.

“I was thinking ghost-busting companion whom I have deeply romantic feelings for and who supports me and loves me.”

“That's kind of a mouthful, Holtz.”

She shrugged and smirked and winked.

And Erin smiled back and kissed her dimpled smile.

When her parents arrived, the day after, Erin, Patty, Abby and Kevin were all lined up waiting for the introductions.

“This is Abby, we did research together pre-ghost-busting.”

“Oh, yes, doctor Yates, is nice to finally meet you” Holtz's father said, shaking her hand.

“Please call me Abby. It's nice to meet you, too.”

“This is Patty” Holtz moved on.

“Hey, how you going?” the tall woman asked shaking their hands.

“You must be the history expert” Mr. Holtzmann smiled.

“That I am, sir.”

She paused a second before introducing Erin.

“You must be doctor Gilbert” her father stepped in for himself at his daughter's pause.

“Jill has told us so much about you” her mother said with a smile, shaking her hand right after her husband did.

“Who's Jill?” a male voice interrupted.

They all looked at the source with baffled looks on their faces.

“Hi. I'm Kevin.”

“Kevin. Sweet, naive, Kevin. What do you think is my first name?”

“What do you mean? Your name is Holtz. Everybody calls you that.”

“So what do you think is my last name?”

“Mann. Holtz Mann.”

“Kevin, my dude, you are in for a surprise” she laughed, patting him on the shoulder while passing him by. 

“Oh, I like surprises” he said with his chipper smile.

Holtz laughed silently urging her parents along.

“Come on, I want to show you my lab” she told her parents, heading towards the stairs. They followed her quickly. “It's Erin's office, too” she pointed at the desk and the board on the right as she walked in.

Her parents and Erin followed her quietly while she explained the stuff they saw around and finished the tour with a display of the view on the rooftop.

“So, what did you guys think?” she asked while they were moving back into the lab.

“This is great, Jill. It looks very intriguing.”

“It also looks dangerous” her father pointed out.

“Don't mind your father, this looks like your dream coming true” her mother continued.

As they walked in to find Erin sitting at her desk while reading a book, she thought that yes, this looked just like everything she had ever wanted had come true.

When Erin looked up from her desk she realized maybe she said it out loud, but her parents where looking at the stuff on her desk again and Erin just smiled fondly at her.

“We're good. We're a great team” Erin confirmed, getting up and taking a couple of steps towards them.

“And we're a fantastic family” Abby interjected walking in from the doorstep she stood at for a couple of minutes while watching the scene and nodding at Holtzmann, prompting her to do their signature handshake, just because.

“You kids are weird” Patty said, walking in while they were finishing shaking hands so peculiarly and addressed Holtz's parents. “You guys are going to stay for dinner? I was about to order us all some pizza.”

“Sure, if it's not a problem.”

“Of course not, you're always welcome here” Abby said, smiling at them and then at Jillian.

And if someone saw the little glimmer of tears in Holtz's eyes, well, nobody commented on it, anyway.

  


//

  


Jillian Holtzmann was thirty-three years old when, on September 18th, while she was on the couch watching a movie with the other Ghostbusters – and Erin was partially sat on her lap and holding her hand – she realized with a startle three things at once: she was happy, she was in love and her life was perfect.

And, despite all odds, she had found a family of her own.

It wasn't what her parents had expected and it was in no way traditional.

But to her, it was flawless. And she wouldn't have changed it for the world.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this was kinda long. Since English is not my first language, I apologize for any mistakes! Let me know what you thought about this and come chat with me on Tumblr about Ghostbusters or anything else at https://www.tumblr.com/blog/thetruthaboutlovecomesat3am
> 
> Thanks for reading, I love you all!


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